Category Archives: Law

It has been a long time since our last post, a lot has happened since then; I’ve run several races, gone several places and enjoyed the addition of a new member to our Family (more on that, and him, later).

Off the bat, THIS IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION WEBSITE! What we do here is offer our opinion on certain things, that should not be taken seriously! Now that that is out of the way, let’s get down to it.

Kuwait is a business center – people here are either studying or working, or the grey area in between. Often times, we find ourselves wanting to know more, and the official way to get that information is long and tedious.

How can you tell if someone is in Kuwait or abroad? Suppose you have someone on your sponsorship and they ran away, if they commit any crime, it’s on your head, if they are abroad, it may be difficult to cancel their residency unless you know they are in the country.

So how do you do it? If you ask the people in charge, they’ll say you need to send a mandoub to some Ministry to get a statement of movement of the person, which requires time, lots of it.

Simply, you use this following trick:

(for the following trick you will require the civil ID number of the person in question)

Step 1:

Go to the MOI website (where you check for your driving licence fines)

Click on “Violation and Fees Payment Gateway” (link – may not work directly, you’ll need to follow the steps above)

Step 4:

click on “traffic” and enter the CID of the person in question, regardless of whether they drive or not.

Proceed with the search, this will be useful for one piece of information only; the unified number.

Copy it, and click on “new searc” (or go back to step 3, but this time, click on “immigration” for the search (not traffic like step 4)

Step 5:

Enter the number you copied into the search window.

Step 6:

For the next act, you will need someone that reads Arabic, or use Google translate (translate the writing in green). There are three options; either there will be a sentence written stating that “the person is clean” (this means they are IN the country), or “the person is outside the country”, or “the person has the following residency fines”.

And there you have it, you can now tell who is where, and proceed accordingly.

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More often than not, we’ll find ourselves on the receiving end of a one finger salute, a flipping of the bird, a middle finger…

When driving back home, I make sure to let any offender know exactly what I think of them (especially on crowded streets) should they have the misfortune of transgressing upon me.

Here however, I keep my windows rolled up and my fingers inside the car, so as to avoid landing on the wrong side of the law should the insultee take offence and attempt to press charges.

Believe it or not, insulting someone whilst driving is a punishable offence. It happened to me today (I refuse to call it Karma) and I did what any warm blooded person would do, I noted the car licence plate number and decided to attempt to press charges.

Went to the closest police station (walking distance) and recounted my terrible ordeal to the police officer, who asked me to wait for the Station Officer, who was not there. So I waited a little while then left, and returned later, adamant to see justice run its course.

The shift had changed and a friendly officer was seated at reception. I recounted my ordeal to him. His first reaction was to find out exactly where it occurred, so as to slide me off to a different police station (jurisdiction) but when I insisted he had it wrong, he told me that I could press charges, then a case would be filed, and I would have to go back and recount what happened, and they’d call the transgressor in for questioning, at which point he could say that it was in fact I who had done that to him!

I asked what he would do if he were in my place, he said if he were not in his uniform, he’d just ignore it and move on.

So I took a page out of his playbook and decided to let this matter go.

A word of warning though the owner of the vehicle with the registration 10-79134…

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As a guy who is steadfast on policy and procedures & rules and regulations (by merit of my job) I must say I am astounded at the level of dedication that these Euro-stitutes (see what I did there?) undertook to verify the identity of their “seekers of flesh pleasure”, they did not mention anything however regarding payment – how did the ladies ensure that the 200KD was available? Bank statements? Credit card details?

Lol.

… each woman was charging KD 200 for one pleasure. According to security sources the women operated via the Internet. A prospective pleasure seeker was required to fill a form online complete with his picture and the reply was assured within 48 hours.

Control: ensure “pleasure seeker” is internet savvy. CHECK!

… the accepted person was then given the name of the place and time and then he was ushered in the lobby of the hotel before proceeding to room of the woman who would then cross check for the name and picture before offering herself at his service.

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From humble upbringing, to tragic end. That is the tale of Mahendran Yadav, the managing director of Emirates Homes Real Estate Brokers, who was tragically struck down (some say unintentionally) by a Gulf National in Dubai after a row erupted between them whereby the former was taking pictures with friends that the latter believed to be inclusive of him and his fiancee. Taking matters into his own hands after complaining to the hotel restaurant staff where they were and seeing no cessation of selfies, he confronted the group and the events which ensued resulted in the death of one of them.

Over a selfie.

Imagine.

What is worse are the comments left by some people on the article (here) and I quote:

“Right to take photograph at a public place is relative and not an absolute one. The hotel restaurant is not exclusive domain of anyone where one could take photographs in spite of objections of others using the restaurant. The victim should have been civilized enough to understand this especially that he was a real estate broker, he should have shown shown some manners. This does not mean the attacker had the right to kill him; but the victim brought it upon himself by refusing to accept request to stop taking photographs.”

“Though the loss of a life is very unfortunate, it’s extremely provoking to take a pic of someone, especially a lady, without consent & more so to refuse when asked to stop. Hotel managements need to inform their guests.”

“The assaulter however if he had a problem he could’ve changed tables or asked his fianc�e to give her back to the camera instead of showing off his muscles on Yadav. I once in Dubai was with a friend in the Atlantis hotel, we ordered dinner, which was so well presented so I took a photo of my plate, the flash was on. Another gulf national next to me started acting funny and he clearly didn’t like it that my camera flash went off and he had a young wife or daughter I guess. Being from the Gulf myself I apologized to him, ,showed him that my photo didn’t have him and that I’m already loyal to mine own not to ogle his wife. 5 years on, I feel bitter that he had this sense of entitlement to express his opinion on my actions.”

When did it become OK to descend to barbarianism over a photograph? When it is crystal clear that the picture taken does not derive its focus entirely on you, it should be no hassle to either get up and move to another table or simply remain silent.

I have yet to add this to the list of complaints I receive in public, from anyone, but rest assured should it ever arise my response would not be to refrain from taking pictures, but to request the requester to get off their high horse and slap them with the realization that they in fact did not marry Helen of Troy.

I am sure a search on Google would paint a more harrowing picture as to how many lives were lost unnecessarily as a result of macho bravado over a picture.

The victim had arrived in Dubai and was employed as a driver before he worked his way up the ladder and made his fortune as a real estate broker, heading up the Emirates Homes Real Estate Brokers firm since 2003.

And now his obituary will read, “killed over a selfie by a Gulf National in Dubai“.

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The law is fickle; to the educated mind, it is a minefield of mostly grey landscape, with few things ever being clearly black or white.

Take for example the following scenario:

A person, upon seeing a patrol car, attempts to hide from it, arousing the suspicion of the officers inside. They stop the person and find he has no ID, so they arrest him. Person drops clear plastic bag before getting into police car, which the officers note and upon inspection find that it is drugs. The person, now a suspect, confessed he was planning to consume the drugs.

Clear cut case right? Wrong.

According to the suspects lawyer, the arrest is to be nullified as the person was not a suspect to begin with, therefore making the whole process that followed null & void – i.e. illegal.

In an Arabic nutshell – ما بني على باطل فهو باطل, meaning whatever is built on a wrong foundation is incorrect.

Now, there are several ways we can take this news:

1) Feel terrible that a drug abuser is loose on the streets once more, and that since no conclusion can be established regarding whether or not he was actually going to consume the drugs or sell them, he could potentially be a drug dealer.

2) Feel happy that this sets precedent to police that they cannot randomly stop you and check you without a warrant.

Going back to the second point, now I am no lawyer so please do not take my words literally, however it would seem that in order for a “checkpoint” to be placed, certain procedures have to be followed and approvals sought. Police do not have the right to inspect you IF YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG – for example, I reported a story called the Mishref Marauder a few years ago; whilst waiting in the parking lot where a known felon was breaking into vehicles, I was beckoned forward by an unmarked car, which happened to be housing two undercover cops. When I refused to approach, they approached me, and checked my ID, he then asked to search my vehicle, which I did not refuse as I had nothing to hide. In retrospect however, I had the right to refuse them to search my car as they did not produce a warrant to do such. It should be mentioned that my reaction and the reaction of the Kuwaiti’s in the running group later when they arrived and were similarly asked questions by the police were COMPLETELY different.

It is unfortunate that we learn a valuable law lesson through this occurrence; I would probably assume his lawyer also filed that his “confession’ was obtained under duress and hence is also null and void.

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Moonlighting, the act of working a second shift in order to put more food on the table and make ends meet, has long been a source of confusion in the State of Kuwait.

Although illegal, several expats looking to bolster their income seek secondary employment, at their own risk.

Expats in Kuwait have to be under a “sponsor”, if you are found to be working in a location and not under their sponsorship, several legal issues can arise (most of which could lead to deportation).

The plan now is to allow expats to work two jobs, legally. There will be many kinks to iron out, but the idea is now being floated and discussed as a tool to stave the inflow of foreign workers and attempt to balance the ratio of Citizen: Expat.

Excerpts:

Foreigners working in the private sector will be allowed to seek part-time jobs in other companies starting from the beginning of the new year, a government official said.

The new provision will legalize this and may also encourage more foreigners to take up part-time work, thus adding to the labor market without adding to the number of foreigners living in Kuwait.

This is a meager silver lining on an ominous cloud for 2015 which carries the following predictions:

The suggested new price of cooking gas cylinders is set to rise over a short period of time from a current KD 0.750 to KD 1.5.

‘Premium’ petrol will increase from 60 fils to 100 fils;

‘Super’ petrol will rise from 65 fils to 130 fils;

‘Ultra’ petrol will skyrocket from 90 fils to 170 fils per liter.

With school fees rising and rents already at an all time high, the cost of living is unbearable; the balance of payments is impossible – striking a balance between cash inflow and outflow, money in and money out.

Those favored by the increased prices are few, those affected by them are many:

It is time to tighten the already paralyzing belts once more, 2015 will relentlessly pummel our pockets and our savings.

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With those simple words we are able to look at Kuwait’s ever growing traffic problem with renewed vision, gaining a better understanding of the elements responsible for making the early morning work commute comparable to running a marathon through a sea of konafa; inexplicably difficult and definitely time consuming.

Kuwait is having a serious traffic problem every morning, afternoon, and evening when students, parents and employees are all in their cars heading to their converging destinations. However, the cause of this deadlock is not the oversupply of drivers licences or the presence of motor vehicles on the streets. That is a sign of progress. Kuwait is expanding, metamorphosing into the next stage of industrial utopia, attracting more foreign investment which entails higher populations of both locals and expats. The car companies have to sell, the salesmen must meet their monthly targets. Blaming the traffic solely on expats and licences distracts from the true cause of the traffic.

There are several factors, such as the following:

Traffic cops are deployed at certain times to high traffic areas such as major roundabouts, exits and school areas in order to ensure smooth flow of traffic. However, no such assistance is evident, with police-men simply waving cars to pass.

It is extremely imperative to regulate traffic at roundabouts as they end up causing a backlog due to the overabundance of choice from every angle. Three lanes of vehicles spew out from every angle, each wanting to go in a different direction, 3X3X3X3 = 71 possibilities at every roundabout. And with no conductor to handle the flow, chaos ensues, with cars honking and cutting in front of others as others refuse to allow anyone to pass in front of them.

The experiment undertaken at the roundabouts on route 80 proved to be useful; major roundabouts are outfitted with traffic signals to help regulate the flow to an extent. Yes, traffic is still a congested, however it flows smoothly with little interference required.

Surprisingly, both major traffic reasons can be given examples in Hawally, where the sudden emergence of several schools at every major entry/exit point from the area causes a traffic jam that leads to spending 30 minutes to traverse a distance of only 2 or 3KM every day. The first reason as mentioned above is the traffic police-men’s lack of hands on traffic handling. The second reason is as follows:

Traffic lights. The intersection at Beirut & Tunis St. for example followed by the intersection of Beirut & Qotaiba St. (parallel to route 40 motorway).

The sequence with which the traffic lights open and close causes a huge delay in traffic as the majority are heading in One Direction, out of Hawally. Anyone caught on the front line of a traffic light can quickly discern how movement should be.

In the absence of order, chaos ensues. People have proven countless times that without a regulating authority, all forms of misdemeanors will transpire. If the law is not constantly surveying and correcting peoples behavior, rules will be discarded and the melee of early morning deadlock will be further exacerbated until we reach the epic traffic jam levels of China:

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Traffic today was more abysmal than usual. Ordinarily, it should not take more than 30 minutes to traverse the distance from the parking lot where my vehicle is to the 4th ring road, the closest exit from the hell hole that is Hawally. Kindly bear in mind that the distance does not exceed 2KM; 2KM in 30 minutes! I can walk faster than that!

No matter where you turn, there is no escaping the dreaded traffic jam that is a direct result of some genius’s idea of proper placement to relocate a school from Jabriya to the already congested hell hole Hawally. Work starts at 8AM, I wake up at 6AM to leave the house by 7AM. Usually I make it there by 7:30-7:45AM. Not today though.

It was not until I reached the road parallel to the fourth that stretches out from in front of Canary on Tunis St. all the way down to Qotaiba St. that I, in a moment of anger, decided to think about taking an illegal turn, to save time. Instead of traversing 270* of a roundabout (an extra 5-10 minutes), one would take a mere left turn and be straight on the final destination road. On any usual day of the week, 9 out of 10 cars would take such a turn, much to my chagrin at the time of being a law-abiding citizen.

What struck me as odd however was the relatively less frequent illegal turn taking, as well as a congregation of people to my left as I travelled towards the roundabout. Usually, a squad car would be parked on a side road, obscured from the view of the cars. From the vantage point I exited onto, I could see no such squad car. However, I kept thinking to myself, what if they changed their modus operandi?

I decided against the illegal turn and headed straight for the roundabout, already tearing at the seams as a result of a massive clogging of its road arteries.

No sooner had I taken that pledge between myself and I did I spot out of the corner of my eye the figure of a man in plain clothes and a pair of dark sunglasses. I saw them stand by a truck that had taken an illegal turn. At first I dismissed him as being a Good Samaritan; however as they turned around, I spotted the badge dangling from his neck. He was an undercover officer!

I breathed an enormous sigh of relief and took the roundabout with a smile on my face. I even shot the man a thumbs up as I passed him.

Given the nature of what I do for a living, I have become very observant.

Always trust your gut. If something does not feel right, take caution. Your bank account will thank you later.

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